“Army snipers and Shabbiha gunmen posted at strategic points terrorized the population, targeting and killing small children, women and other unarmed civilians.…” (p. 10)
“After the withdrawal of League of Arab States observers in late January, the army intensified its bombardment with heavy weapons. It gave no warning to the population and unarmed civilians were given no chance to evacuate. As a result, large numbers of people, including many children, were killed. Several areas were bombarded and then stormed by State forces, which arrested, tortured and summarily executed suspected defectors and opposition activists.…” (p. 11)
“The commission documented evidence that sections of Homs Military Hospital and Al Ladhiqiyah State Hospital had been transformed into torture centres. Security agents…chained seriously injured patients to their beds, electrocuted them, beat wounded parts of their body.… Medical personnel who did not collaborate faced reprisals.” (p. 13-14)
“Children continued to be arbitrarily arrested and tortured while in detention.… Children were treated in the same way as adults.… They were kept in the same [prison] cells and subject to the same methods of torture.” (p. 15)
Excerpts of a report compiled by a U.N. panel tasked with investigating human rights abuses in Syria. Based on 369 interviews, the report documents many crimes against humanity committed by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime during the past year. (New Republic, February 24.)
MILITARY INTERVENTION COULD IMPROVE SITUATION IN SYRIA,
OR MAKE IT MUCH WORSE
Peter Goodspeed
National Post, March 10, 2012
The stench of death hangs over Syria one year into a popular uprising that is threatening to become an all-out regional war. With more than 7,500 dead, Syria’s hopes of reaping the benefits of an Arab Spring have been annihilated. The city of Homs lies shattered and helpless from a month-long tank and artillery assault; videos of violence perpetrated by Syrian security forces on unarmed civilians dominate the Internet and thousands of refugees are stumbling across the border into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan with tales of torture, fear and despair.…
Calls for international intervention are escalating as the death toll increases and frustration and outrage at Syria’s agony grows. People, desperate to do something—anything—are demanding steps be taken to end the killing. But the options, military and diplomatic, are almost as complex and uncertain as the conflict itself.
U.S. Senator John McCain has called for U.S. air strikes to protect population centres and create safe havens for Syrian refugees. “A whole lot of people are going to die if we allow the status quo to prevail and the slaughter to continue,” he said, insisting the United States has a moral and strategic obligation to end Syria’s trauma.
Others are calling for medical and military assistance for Syria’s opposition groups; providing weapons and intelligence to the Free Syrian Army (FSA); establishing a country-wide no-fly zone; creating a World War Two-style armed resistance movement and inserting foreign troops to carve out humanitarian corridors to protect refugees along Syria’s borders or around threatened cities. Despite a year of dithering diplomacy, repeatedly demolished by Russian and Chinese vetoes, the United Nations continues to seek a negotiated settlement.
UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos was finally able to get into Syria and toured war-ravaged Homs for 45 minutes last Wednesday. Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, recently appointed special envoy on Syria by both the UN and the Arab League, arrived in Damascus Saturday to seek a ceasefire to start a “new political process” in Syria. But Syria’s main opposition group has rejected Mr. Annan’s overtures, saying it is pointless to hold talks with a regime that is killing its own people.
China’s former ambassador to Syria, Li Huaxin, spent two days in Damascus last week promoting a six-point plan to resolve the crisis and apparently got nowhere. Friday, China announced it would send an assistant foreign minister to the Middle East and Europe to discuss possible diplomatic solutions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov flew to Cairo Saturday to meet members of the Arab League. Still the killing goes on. And politicians, policy makers and advocacy groups struggle to find a solution.…
U.S. officials made it clear they are reluctant to get involved militarily in Syria and would rather focus on diplomatic and political solutions.… “This terrible situation has no simple answers,” U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told the Senate committee.… Still, the urge to act remains. Syria is a crucial geopolitical hinge in the Middle East that touches the interests of dozens of states.…
HILLARY’S SYRIA CHUTZPAH
Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2012
Listening to Hillary Clinton berate China and Russia for their refusal to condemn Syria’s crackdown on its own people—“It’s just despicable,” she said last [month] at the anti-Assad “Friends of Syria” conference in Tunis—it’s almost possible to forget that this administration was once eager to get on Bashar’s good side, too.
“Only a year ago, this country’s government was being vilified as a dangerous pariah,” the New York Times’ Robert Worth reported in March 2009. “Today, Syria seems to be coming in from the cold.” Top administration envoy George Mitchell paid Assad a visit that June, seeking, he said, “to establish a relationship built on mutual respect and mutual interest.”
Then, as the Syrian uprising began a year ago, Mrs. Clinton continued to paint Assad as a “reformer.” It took President Obama more than six months (and 2,000 murdered Syrians) to call for Assad to step down.
Even now, the administration has no plan to get Assad to step aside, other than to call on him to do so. A U.N. resolution on Syria vetoed by Russia and China was the usual mush of exhortation and condemnation. Tunis’ meeting ended with a ringing call for, well, nothing: “They still give this man [Assad] a chance to kill us, just as he has already killed thousands of people,” said an opposition fighter in Homs, sizing up what Hillary Clinton’s cheap solicitude means for him and his besieged city.
Compared to this, the position of the Russians is at least intellectually defensible. Say what you will about Moscow’s despotic allies, mercenary interests and autocratic principles, Vladimir Putin has been consistent in sticking up for all three. That’s more than can be said for a U.S. administration that urges democracy, nonviolence and human rights for Syria—and pays nothing but lip service to each.
But let’s get back to the administration’s early efforts to engage Assad—itself part of a broader push to hit “reset” buttons with Russia, Iran, the Muslim world, Europe, China, Latin America and even the planet itself.
When Mr. Obama came to office, the memory of Rafik Hariri’s murder and Syria’s subsequent campaign of assassination in Lebanon was still fresh. So was the knowledge that Damascus had teamed up with Pyongyang to build a secret nuclear reactor, and that it maintained an apparatus of domestic repression second only in the Arab world to Moammar Gadhafi’s. In other words, the Assad regime wasn’t exactly a model of rectitude when the administration decided to engage it. It did so, we were told at the time, in the hopes that Damascus could be a constructive player in an overall Arab settlement with Israel. More importantly, though, engaging Damascus was justified as a canny way of detaching it from Tehran’s orbit and thus adding to the pressure on the mullahs to be a little more reasonable.
None of this ever had any chance of coming to pass. But whatever the realpolitik merits of trying to engage Damascus, at no time did the administration ever justify its position as a way of bringing freedom and justice to the Syrian people. If anything, the administration went out of its way to curtail U.S. efforts to promote human rights and democracy, precisely because they got in the way of pressing all those reset buttons. Democracy and freedom was so passé, so arrogant, so…Dubya.…
Since then, the administration has come around to the idea that being on the side of democracy is good U.S. policy. But here’s an irony: Just as it has become the conventional wisdom that Mr. Assad’s downfall is the only way to detach Syria from Iran, the administration has adopted a purely rhetorical attitude toward regime change. I have no doubt Mrs. Clinton has come around to loathing Mr. Assad as much as some wild-eyed neocons did a few years ago. But loathing combined with inaction still amounts to the worst form of indifference: the willful kind.
Which brings me back to Mrs. Clinton’s tirade. There is a good case to be made that we should apply sufficient military pressure on Assad to help tip the scales in favor of the opposition, as we did in Libya. There’s also a plausible case to be made that the last thing the U.S. needs is another military entanglement on behalf of a cause we barely know for the sake of a goal we can only hazily define.
But there is no case for lecturing Russia on its own long-standing record of engaging its faithful clients in Syria, much less for invoking the suffering of a people she has no serious intention of saving. Even chutzpah has its limits, Hillary.
AMERICA’S ALIBIS FOR NOT HELPING SYRIA
Fouad Ajami
Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2012
There are the Friends of Syria, and there are the Friends of the Syrian Regime. The former, a large group—the United States, the Europeans and the bulk of Arab governments—is casting about for a way to end the Assad regime’s assault on its own people. In their ranks there is irresolution and endless talk about the complications and the uniqueness of the Syrian case.
No such uncertainty detains the Friends of the Syrian Regime—Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and to a lesser extent China. In this camp, there is a will to prevail, a knowledge of the stakes in this cruel contest, and material assistance for the Damascus dictatorship.
In the face of the barbarism unleashed on the helpless people of Homs, the Friends of Syria squirm and hope to be delivered from any meaningful burdens. Still, they [met late last month] in Tunis to discuss their options. But Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad needn’t worry. The Tunisian hosts themselves proclaimed that this convocation held on their soil precluded a decision in favor of foreign military intervention.
Syria is not Libya, the mantra goes, especially in Washington. The provision of arms to the Syrian opposition is “premature,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently stated. We don’t know the Syrian opposition, another alibi has it—they are of uncertain provenance and are internally divided. Our weapons could end up in the wrong hands, and besides, we would be “militarizing” this conflict. Those speaking in such ways seem to overlook the disparity in firepower between the Damascus ruler with his tanks and artillery, and the civilian population aided by defectors who had their fill with official terror.
The borders of Syria offer another exculpation for passivity. Look at the map, say the naysayers. Syria is bordered by Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Israel. Intervention here is certain to become a regional affair.
Grant the Syrians sympathy, their struggle unfolds in the midst of an American presidential contest. And the incumbent has his lines at the ready for his acceptance speech in Charlotte, N.C. He’s done what he had promised during his first presidential run, shutting down the war in Iraq and ending the American presence. This sure applause line precludes the acceptance of a new burden just on the other side of the Syria-Iraq frontier.
The silence of President Obama on the matter of Syria reveals the general retreat of American power in the Middle East. In Istanbul some days ago, a Turkish intellectual and political writer put the matter starkly to me: We don’t think and talk much about America these days, he said.…
No one is asking or expecting the U.S. Marines to storm the shores of Latakia. This Syrian tyranny is merciless in its battles against the people of Homs and Zabadani, but its army is demoralized and riven with factionalism and sectarian enmities. It could be brought down by defectors given training and weapons; safe havens could give disaffected soldiers an incentive, and the space, to defect.…
The world does not always oblige our desires for peace; some struggles are thrown our way and have to be taken up. In his State of the Union address, President Obama dissociated himself from those who preach the doctrine of America’s decline. Never mind that he himself had been a declinist and had risen to power as an exponent of America’s guilt in foreign lands. We should take him at his word. In a battered Syria, a desperate people await America’s help and puzzle over its leader’s passivity.
(Fouad Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution
and co-chairman of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.)
SOMETHING TO WORRY ABOUT
Martin Sherman
Jerusalem Post, February 23, 2012
“Syria is not lost. Assad is Western educated and is not a religious man. He can still join a moderate grouping.”—Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, Haaretz, November 13, 2009.…
Seen against the backdrop of the carnage being perpetrated across Syria by the Assad regime, the magnitude of the misjudgment made by Gabi Ashkenazi, then the IDF’s chief of staff, is enough to make any self-respecting Israeli cringe with embarrassment.
None so blind
Askhenazi is not the only senior Israeli leader to articulate an appallingly inaccurate assessment of Israel’s adversaries, but in many ways his is a particularly interesting and instructive example. After all, before his appointment as chief of staff, much of his 40-year military career was spent in the IDF’s Northern Command, including as its commander. One must, therefore, presume that a large portion of his time was devoted to evaluating the Syrian threat, and to familiarizing himself with nature of the Syrian military dictatorship. It is alarming to learn that despite the opportunity he had to gauge the true characteristics of the Syrian leader, his appraisal was so erroneous.…
Ever since Assad Jr. inherited the reins of power from his tyrannical father in 2000, every Israeli government has, in one form or another, explored the possibility of surrendering the Golan to the “Western educated” despot in Damascus—studiously ignoring the abundance of evidence attesting to the ruthless brutality of the regime, readily available to anyone willing to see it.
Typical of the moronic myopia displayed by many in the Israeli leadership was a pronouncement, made barely a year before revolt erupted across Syria, by Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who held the position of minister of defense in the Sharon government. While serving as minister of trade and industry in the current Netanyahu government, Ben-Eliezer declared: “Syria is the key to regional change for us. If I was prime minister, I would put all my hopes on Syria.…” This from the former defense minister who, one would have hoped, would have had a more informed and sober view of reality.
There but for the grace of God
Fortunately for the nation, the Israeli leadership has not been able to act on any misplaced optimism—as it did on other fronts—regarding the possibility of reaching a settlement with the Syrian regime in exchange of the total evacuation of the Golan Heights—the sine qua non for any such agreement.
One can only imagine what consternation would reign today, had such a deal been struck. For even under the highly implausible assumption that adequate security arrangements and demilitarization deep into Syrian territory had been agreed upon with Damascus, the events raging today would have clearly imperiled any such understandings. After all, in the likely event that, sooner or later, the Assad regime is toppled, it is more than plausible that any successor would not see itself bound by such an agreement.
Indeed, it is difficult to keep a straight face while reading some of the suggestions put forward by prominent Israelis regarding the nature of the relations between the countries. Take, for example, the proposal by the Israel-Syria Peace Society, founded and chaired by the former director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Dr. Alon Liel, and whose website claims that its board includes “senior academicians, ex-diplomats, former security officials and prominent Israeli business people.” In its “Nirvana-Now” formula for an Israeli-Syrian peace, the “star-studded” organization envisions that “the two countries will sign a peace agreement [and] a Peace Park will be established on the Golan Heights for the use of both sides. Israelis will be able to enter the park…without visas.”
Wow! Imagine! A Peace Park! How could any tyrannical butcher possibly resist that? Isn’t it comforting to know that those who have been charged with the design of the nation’s diplomacy have such a firm grasp on reality and can come up with such innovative ideas to ensure lasting peace?
An ongoing malaise
In many respects, the savagery in Syria should serve as a much needed wake-up call for the Israeli establishment that will dispel any delusions about setting up “normal” relations with Damascus. Given the merciless manner in which Assad has broken the social contract with his own citizens, one can only imagine how little compunction he would have in violating any other contract he might have concluded with the hated Zionists.…
One of the best examples of how detached from reality such assessments have been was provided by celebrated author Amos Oz, the guru of the bon-ton Left.… Several months before the unilateral retreat from Lebanon in 2000, Haaretz’s Ari Shavit conducted an interview with Oz on the importance of “emotional sensitivity in politics.” In the interview, bizarrely entitled “Try A Little Tenderness,” Oz was introduced by Shavit as “a concerned Israeli author who worries that he may be seeing something that others, blinded by office, do not see; that he may be hearing things on a frequency that others, deafened by the noise of government, do not hear. For that reason he…seeks to make his voice heard on the eve of fateful decisions. He asks for the right to speak.”
And what did Oz’s finely tuned ear discern that others could not?… He informed Haaretz readers with total confidence that “The minute we leave South Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hezbollah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hezbollah was sheer folly from the outset. It most certainly no longer will be relevant when Israel returns to its internationally recognized northern border.”
It is difficult to conceive of a prognosis that proved much more fallacious than this, as events—including the Second Lebanon War of 2006—later proved. However, this massive error in judgment has done nothing to undermine the status of the man or to diminish the influence of the kind of message he conveys.…
Something to worry about
There were, of course, dissenting voices, but they were dismissed and disregarded. They were excluded from the mainstream discourse, from the universities, from major conferences. They were passed over for appointments and deprived of resources. No matter how accurate their assessment proved, no matter how unequivocally they were vindicated, their counsel was not sought, their advice not heeded, their warnings sidelined.
It is difficult to overstate the damage that this has wrought. The reasons are clear. By adopting unrealistic assessments of the enemies ranged against the country, policy-makers have precluded any possibility of convincingly conveying to the world Israel’s security concerns and of gaining any understanding for measures needed to address them. After all, it matters hugely if you are facing “a Western educated” ruler capable of “joining a moderate grouping,” or a homicidal despot who has no qualms about butchering his own citizens. It matters hugely if once Israel withdraws to some internationally agreed upon line, its enemies will be placated; or whether they will merely use any withdrawal as a platform to continue to relentlessly harass it when the opportunity arises.
Every Israeli must ask: Can our leaders really be so out of touch with reality regarding the nature of our enemies? Or are they merely hobbled by the dictates of political correctness that prohibit them from articulating, and acting on, an accurate assessment of Israel’s Arab adversaries? And in the final analysis, are they more concerned about incurring international disapproval than about adopting measures that endanger the lives and limbs of Israeli citizens? That is something to worry about.
